giant stomach

June 14, 2006 7:14 PM

Seeing this picture, I was wondering about China's One-Child policy: What did they do with twins, triplets & births of multiples?
posted by growabrain to Society & Culture (10 answers total)

Multiples are exempt.
posted by nadawi at 7:18 PM on June 14, 2006

If I remember rightly from a high-school geography class video, the one-child policy is implemented mainly by pre-planning who can get pregnant - couples are given permission to get pregnant on a quota system. If that pregnancy ends in twins then the government can hardly complain.

Like the Wikipedia article kinda says, the policy isn't literal - it's more of an abstract goal.
posted by cillit bang at 8:19 PM on June 14, 2006

There are a few exceptions as well: the one-child policy does not apply to ethnic minorities (~60 million), and a couple can have two children if both parents are university-educated.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 9:25 PM on June 14, 2006

Lately, because of the alarming ratio of males:females in China, couples who have a girl are allowed to have a second child.
posted by azuma at 10:24 PM on June 14, 2006

Yes, twins are exempted, and if you have another kid you are just simply fined. If you've got the money (and connections) you can have kids all day long if you want to.

I know a guy here in China, he's 20, and he's got 4 brothers and two sisters. It helps that his family is really rich.

The rule isn't a real enforced law, but more like a half-hearted attempt at controlling the rate of growth here.
posted by taschenrechner at 1:33 AM on June 15, 2006

I was under the impression that the rule existed in the form of financial benefits that are gained or loss, dependent upon the number and gender of the children. I.E., why rich families can ignore the rule, have multiple children, as they can afford to live without the government offered benefits.
posted by Atreides at 4:53 AM on June 15, 2006

There have been stories about women who were pregnant who were physically forced to have abortions.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:39 AM on June 15, 2006

Those stories are mainly from the Deng Era. Today the way it works is that in cities you are are still officially only supposed to have one child, and most families actually end up doing that. However there are a number of exceptions to that, some already mentioned, such as twins, or if your first child is a girl, or if you are a minority, or live in the countryside. If you do not fall into these catagories then you can still go ahead and have a second child, but you will face fines and your second child will not be able to benefit from public services for free as a minor, esentially you need to send them to private school or pay a fee to send them to public school, that being said most people who can afford the fee can afford private school anyways.
I knew several families over there that had more then one kid, one of them (my former boss) claimed to be a minority, and had a second child based on that, another was a friend of mine who was from the countryside and had a younger sister, they were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination and they were born during the Deng era, but I think that those rules were not applied nearly as rigorously in the countryside back then as in the cities. I also know two rich families that have multiple children and one that is planning for a third child right now, but they have more money then they know what to do with, and since they are innately expensive extra children are a status symbol in a society that is on some levels very concerned with status.
posted by BobbyDigital at 6:29 AM on June 15, 2006

I've also heard that enforcement varies quite a bit from province to province.
posted by delmoi at 8:20 AM on June 15, 2006

Response by poster: Follow up: reprint of photo here. the story seems to be fake though
posted by growabrain at 9:56 AM on June 16, 2006